Re: A renegotiated Exxon contract under the DNC will yield more than the PPP or PNC could ever deliver post 2025.

Nov 02, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

On reflection, I admit that in stepping into our national politics, I have gone beyond my earlier remit as a career economist to advise on solutions to Guyana’s economic challenges.  Indeed, the very real economic problems and challenges Guyana confronted as a socialist/communist organized economy transitioning to a market-based one have now morphed into endemic corruption and willful economic mismanagement of the PPP, our government-sponsored poverty complete with cash grants and $100,000 giveaways, and the seemingly irreconcilable challenges of our national politics.

Here our government-sponsored poverty has become exacerbated with the PPP now giving away billions of United States dollars every year to Exxon while proceeding on a borrowing spree to finance its grand ideas of economic development while Guyanese are punished by a poor health and education system replete with underpaid doctors, nurses and teachers, and latrine pits and an overly dysfunctional sewage system in schools across the country.

One of the assumptions of economics is the concept of rationality, where consumers, firms and government are able to choose what is best for them.  A major consequence of decisions biased by externalities such as ethnicity in our national politics is sub optimal outcomes in very nearly all aspects of economic management from the misallocation of resources (inexperienced persons/firms selected), for example, and unfair distribution of government financial resources across communities based on ethnic/political factors.

The primary challenge facing Guyanese today is that as our economic and political history has shown, our major political parties, the PPP and PNC, have consistently failed to produce balanced economic growth and development for Guyanese where they feel they have been fairly treated regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation, and have been grossly incompetent in the management of our economic affairs, with the PPP’s approach to governance producing a system in which corruption has now become entrenched, and part and parcel of its government.  The PPP will immediately jump to refute this, but Irfaan Ali’s unequivocal commitment to subvert the establishment of National Petroleum Commission in favour of having his mentor and Guyana’s corruption-in-chief retain full responsibility of all aspects of our oil wealth in spite of glaring evidence of unchecked corruption uncovered by Vice-News a couple of years ago, serves as a striking example.   As recently as last week also, it was uncovered that another firm which had its contract terminated due to under-performance was again granted another multi-million infrastructure contract.  Why did the PPP administration facilitate the payment of close to US$40 million to facilitate the construction of the road-to-nowhere at Amaila Falls?  That’s US$40 million spent with no benefit to society.  Somebody got paid.

Guyanese are reminded that the taxes they pay is still their money.  They just pay this to government to finance the provision of services, social and physical infrastructure necessary to deliver on the welfare needs of citizens.  All forms of corruption involving government expenditures are simply mechanisms designed to steal your money. The PPP will never seek to identify and disclose the amount of taxpayers’ money stolen annually through their institutionalized corruption system.  On the other hand, the corruption managed by the PPP’s Corruption-in-Chief is more closely aligned with mafia-style business operations, where the mafia simply coerces and fleeces businesses.

The recent failures of the PNC-APNU-AFC alliance in their 2015-2020 term inclusive of their agreement for the Government of Guyana to pay the income taxes of Exxon in the current GoG-Exxon contract, coupled with their unvoiced promise to re-institute vote-rigging and ballot-box stuffing should they ever get back into office, leave Guyanese with little choice but to have the PPP and its corruption-in-chief back in office again 2025.  With just over a year left, we have one last chance of giving it a shot at forming a strong government to defeat the PPP.  The DNC in its 2020 manifesto offered a strong policy framework aimed at revitalizing and transforming our non-oil sector without recourse to the financial resources of our oil wealth.  With this and many other ideas for our 2025 Manifesto included under a renegotiated contract, Guyana will be much better off than we could ever hope to be under either the PPP or the vote-rigging PNC.    Do we want to recover the US$28-49 billion the PNC has signed away, and the PPP has committed to giving away? I submit that we do. It is ours, for our children, for our children’s children.  We just need to develop and demonstrate the maturity to understand that our ethnic groups have no feud with each other, and to stop being programmed by the ethnic politics of the PNC and PPP.  Our future is in our hands.  We, our children, have suffered enough.

Sincerely,

Craig Sylvester,

Democratic National Congress.

(Re: A renegotiated Exxon contract under the DNC will yield more than the PPP or PNC could ever deliver post 2025.)

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• cash grants, exacerbated, Exxon, poverty, PPP and PNC

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